Chapter 28
My feet were heavy as I forced them up the metal staircase to the loft inside the barn. I’d left it for weeks at this point, but it was time to clean up in case the Hopes needed it for storage.
Reading Fenton’s journal that I’d stolen from his apartment still left me with icky residual guilt, though it hadn’t stopped me from poring over every page.
I hadn’t learned anything useful, other than chilling confessions of his nightly activities and embarrassing new depths of his obsession over me.
Violence, admiration, passion, danger, and lust had all mixed and left me with new insight into the vampire who’d been my best friend, and though the actions he described hardly shocked me, the twisted romance of his words had.
I gathered the trash he’d left behind up there in a round plastic bin — liquor bottles and cigarette butts mostly.
Garbage. Fenton had written about the feeling of his fangs sinking into the sour, sweaty neck of a man who’d been abusing a young woman.
There was an oddly sexual edge to every description, from the girl’s terrible, ecstatic whimpers at watching her boyfriend die, to the way the man’s arms had clung to Fenton’s body, fingers digging into his back.
It had been heavenly to drain this man of his life with a voyeur present.
Fenton had dropped his body like garbage behind the apartment’s dumpster.
He’d said all the man’s hate and violence had been sucked away, too, and in death, his face was innocent like a young boy’s.
I couldn’t get that image out of my head.
And if Fenton had drained away the violence, did that mean he’d taken it into himself?
I wasn’t sure if that confession was worse than the one concerning the rushed, unplanned sex we’d had just before he’d gone to kill that man.
The only instinct stronger than a vampire’s hunger for warm blood, Fenton had written, is his desire to turn the one he loves.
When he’d sunk his fangs into my shoulder, I hadn’t known the battle waging inside him to stop himself from turning me into a vampire.
I’d had no idea just how close to death I was.
I lifted my blanket and shook off the light layer of dust that had collected before rolling it up for a trip to the washing machine. I stripped off the pillowcase next, and something dropped to my feet.
His notebook, the one he carried in his back pocket. I smiled and opened to the first page. His list of rules. I wished I’d had the time to talk to him about this. Did it really no longer come naturally to him that it was wrong to steal and kill? Had it been that way even before he was a vampire?
I flipped through the next few pages. There were names, phone numbers, and addresses jotted down, reminders of appointments at specific dates and times, and jagged pieces of poetry. Or quotes? I had no idea about the origin or intention.
Bite me, bruise me, I am a piece of fruit on a platter, on one page.
If you drank my blood, it would taste like you, a few pages later. I kept searching.
I called out for God that night, and he did not answer.
With my tongue so deep, I taste your heart, can I be good, too? Am I good?
I’m a spider, molting my skin too often.
“Weird.” My own voice startled me out of the trance of slipping through pages. I tucked the notebook into my back pocket. My hands shook while I rolled the foam sleeping mat back up and put it where it belonged. A different voice made me jump in fear this time.
“Oh, sorry,” Nico said, stopping where he’d entered the barn after calling my name. The joking air he’d put on collapsed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You just startled me.” I was done with cleaning up the evidence of Fenton’s stay. It hadn’t taken long at all.
Nico made a drawn-out groan in the back of his throat, which meant he was thinking and struggling with what to say. I gathered up the bedding to take to the wash. Please, don’t…
“That’s not what I meant.” His boots stomped up the stairs, cutting off my escape. “I’m worried about you, Fallon.”
“Why?” I asked like I’d gotten in trouble. Nico shrugged like he might be, too.
“You’ve been staying out all night and sleeping all day, and we hardly see you anymore.
I expect that kind of thing from Amanda, but you’ve never been like that, ‘til recently. Papa thinks it’s probably just you processing some grief, or you know, going through a growth spurt as he calls it.
” Both our laughs were careful and airy. “But I don’t know.”
“You think it’s something else?”
“I’ve struggled before, you know. Before Derrick…
and after. Blamed myself for not being there that night.
We’d actually talked about it. He said something about how he wished he could just go out there with a gun and chase that vampire off his land.
He was Derrick, though, you know? Wouldn’t kill a cockroach on a kitchen counter.
I wasn’t sure if he’d ever even used a gun in his life.
I just thought he’d had his first taste of alcohol and he was all manly bluster, I guess.
Really, I didn’t think about it at all, ‘cause I wanted to go drink with my buddies that night.”
I clutched my blanket closer to my chest, despite how hot it was.
Nico had never told me this before. Derrick had told him about his foolish, heroic plan that got him killed…
A flash of hate bubbled up and shocked me.
Blame pressed too close against my lips before I doused it.
The lines on his face were written with the years he’d spent blaming and hating himself for it.
“Nico, I’m so sorry.”
He was so surprised he took a step back. We spent long, awkward moments meeting one another’s eyes and looking away, sipping in the understanding that way where words failed.
“I spent that first year after mostly drunk. And I’m not saying that’s what it is for you, but I recognize the same darkness, the same heaviness, I think. Not grief. The avoidance of it.”
I had no idea what to say, so I just passively nodded. I didn’t even know if he was correct. I wanted nothing more than to run away, but he was still blocking my exit.
“Look, sorry about this,” he laughed. “We’ve always had this unspoken policy with you to give you space and let you live on your own terms. You’re very private.”
“It’s fine.”
“Let me help you with that.” He took the trash can, shaking the contents for a better look. “I guess Peter’s done lurking up here, then? Haven’t seen him around again. Though I can’t say I saw him much even when you were with your family.”
I took the chance to move past Nico once we were down the stairs. I clutched at the bedding like it was a struggle to hold onto the bundle, just so I could escape the conversation. I left Nico with one final answer, though I didn’t look back to see if he caught it.
“Yeah. Fenton’s gone.”
I wasn’t free yet, though. I nearly collided with Gabriel, who was walking casually towards the barn entrance. I wasn’t sure if it was natural, or if he’d been eavesdropping. Maybe he’d put Nico up to talking to me.
“Peter’s done with his guard duty, then?” Gabriel asked. “I hardly saw him.”
“He won’t be coming around here anymore, I’m sure.”
He cut me off before I could thank him for allowing Fenton to stay over. “That’s too bad. I hope he’s okay.”
I tilted my head, giving Gabriel a questioning look. I was afraid any answer would give away the emotions that dampened my throat. He’d gone serious and thoughtful, and Nico hovered close by now.
“I know he’s a vampire, and I have all these theoretical concepts of what that must mean. But every time I looked at Petey, he was just my son’s lost young friend.”
“Dad,” Nico chided behind me. “He’s the same type of creature that killed your son.”
I winced. After reading Fenton’s journal, I couldn’t deny the truth in that. “Nico’s right,” I spoke gently. “It’s better for him to stay away. He can be dangerous.”
“I don’t blame him.” Gabriel looked between the two of us.
“I know it must sound strange. I’ve experienced plenty of loss in my life.
My younger sister Amanda, she died in a car accident.
We lost my wife to cancer. I lost my best friend to depression.
Derrick, we lost him to vampires. Maybe just kids like Peter who never learned any better.
I can’t blame Petey for it, any more than I can blame cars or cancer for the others. ”
“Well, at least be careful,” Nico groaned at his dad’s overly kind heart as he walked away, back to his ranch duties.
“Thank you, Papa.” I couldn’t quite express what I was thankful for, but I was glad that at least someone else in the world saw Peter as more than just his worst parts. If Gabriel saw the worth in him, then maybe throwing away everything for Fenton hadn’t been the biggest mistake of my life.
I shook on the walk to the laundry room.
The blanket Peter had borrowed didn’t smell like him, only like cigarette smoke and dust. He really was gone now, and the loss was more bitter in my lungs than the acrid scent he’d left behind.
Nico Hope had been right. Since coming back from the Hunter Land, I’d hardly been the same person at all.
I barely saw the family, and when I did, most of my thoughts were on the hunt.
Then there were the people I’d cared about.
Hadn’t I been heartbroken over my breakup with Virgil Miller?
Didn’t I — love him? I couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked through my thoughts.
There had been Heather from the Vampire Watch Club, too, who’d died only a few months ago, and even though I barely knew her, I’d felt so responsible for her death that I’d sworn to myself she’d be in my thoughts every day.
She hadn’t been. I couldn’t even think of her last name.